Mars Obsession

Why are we so obsessed with Mars?

Perhaps it's the red planet's proximity to us? We're just being nosy neighbors? Perhaps it's the likeness to Earth? The rocky, albeit cold and dry, surface?

Whatever the attraction, there is a lot we're discovering a lot about Mars-- and more coming soon-- according to science headlines this week.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, aka the Curiosity rover, moved to its new home atop a rocket this week. It will begin its journey to the Gale Crater on the red planet the day after Thanksgiving. (Our fearless director of the Morrison Planetarium will be tweeting live from the launch on November 23^rd and 25th—follow @calacademy to get the scoop.) According to NASA’s website,

Curiosity has 10 science instruments to search for evidence about whether Mars has had environments favorable for microbial life, including chemical ingredients for life. The unique rover will use a laser to look inside rocks and release the gasses so that its spectrometer can analyze and send the data back to Earth.

This week, a publication in Nature revealed the potential history of water (and perhaps life) on the planet. A new interpretation of years of mineral-mapping data, from more than 350 sites on Mars examined by European and NASA orbiters, suggests martian environments with abundant liquid water on the surface existed only during short episodes. As Scientific American reports:

…although Mars…seems to have passed through a warm, wet phase, the bulk of the action looks to have occurred in the crust, beneath a surface that remained mostly dry and frigid.

But that doesn’t mean life didn’t exist, says the report's lead author, Bethany Ehlmann, assistant professor at Caltech and scientist at NASA/JPL.

If surface habitats were short-term, that doesn't mean we should be glum about prospects for life on Mars, but it says something about what type of environment we might want to look in. The most stable Mars habitats over long durations appear to have been in the subsurface. On Earth, underground geothermal environments have active ecosystems.

Finally, an international team of “marsonauts” returned from a simulated mission to Mars today. The six men inhabited a windowless isolation chamber for the past 17 months. And surprisingly, it went very well, says Universe Today:

During this simulated Mars mission, these gents have had their brains monitored, bodies scanned, donated samples and kept house. On top of that, they’ve done it so well that scientists can’t wait to get their hands on the results.

New Scientist has more on the mission, dubbed Mars500.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL